MELANESIAN • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Melanesian

... interrupted by two military coups in 1987, caused by concern over a government perceived as dominated by the Indian community (descendants of contract laborers brought to the islands by the British in the 19th century). A 1990 constitution favored native Melanesian control of Fiji, but led to heavy Indian emigration; the population loss resulted in economic difficulties, but ensured that Melanesians became the majority. Amendments enacted in 1997 made the constitution more equitable. Free and peaceful elections ...

— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... political economists who tell us that every convert costs us 200, and that at the present rate of progress it would take more than 200,000 years to evangelize the world. There is nothing at all startling in these figures. Every child born in Europe is as much a heathen as the child of a Melanesian cannibal; and it costs us more than 200 to turn a child into a Christian man. The other calculation is totally erroneous; for an intellectual harvest must not be calculated by adding simply grain to grain, but by counting each grain as a living seed, that ...

— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller